CAP 21 CAP 21 - Part 1 - Concept Submissions

[Disaster Area]

not sure how to implement the mega idea into it and I mean mega and base forme behaving differently is a p obvious concept [one I've had for over a year in BAM ...] but anyways I felt like throwing something out having quickly mused on the OU metagame. Furthermore the OU metagame already has lots of information-based play (e.g. is it zard X or Y, what's the manaphy/goth set, etc. ...). Nevertheless I think having a mega may allows you to increase the effectiveness of this CAP further should you choose my submission (though on the flipside, the 1 mega per team restriction might undermine it somewhat.. depends on how you make it turn out).

Name: Interactivity
General Description: This would be a concept that would try and change the game to make it more interactive between the players.
Justification: The ORAS metagame rn in part is suffering from a lack of it, with goth stall requiring very little game-planning and allowing a lot of auto-pilot playing. So I thought maybe a submission based around increasing the interactivity in the game in some way seemed like a good idea. It's also pretty vague and open to being a challenge, so it sounded like a good potential submission to me.
Questions To Be Answered: What defines interactivity in the ORAS OU Metagame? How does someone increase interactivity in the metagame, and does the addition of single Pokemon prove to be effective at changing it?
Explanation: nah I sorta covered everything I wanted to say, I mean I guess this is pretty vague but I'm unlikely to add much else beyond this, although if it's chosen (please someone tell me if so) then I'd definitely keep a watchful eye on it. Also I always feel that I've not really seen CAP teach much about the OU metagme (it's never felt like a good justification for creating fakemons in the first place, the people who wish they could make their own mons and the people who want to learn about OU at an advanced level at least nowadays is barely an overlapping group - though I know the CAP staff are focussed on trying to improve upon this issue), and this felt like it would be something highly relevant (see: the PR goth thread) to the game.

 

[NumberCruncher]

I mean, you could also have the base be a scout and the Mega be a cleaner, so its not like this concept is limited. I have two major issues with this concept: a) your definitions of "specialization" and "utility" for this concept (the usage of these terms here are a bit different in context in other areas of battling I think) and b) how can you lose your specialty when Mega Evolving when you keep the same moveset? Not that I can't find a way, but I want to see how you answer the second one, or even place that in the questions, as it would be what the community would have to decide as well.

Good thought on the question. I added it to the summary.

 

[DetroitLolcat]

After getting some constructive criticism from users like jas61292 and HD, I've edited my concept. I changed it from "Pure Utility Mega" to "Support Comes First", and have emphasized that the CAP should be defined primarily but not solely by its supportive presence. I've also reworked the Questions to Be Answered.

 

[EpicUmbreon29]

jas61292 , I edited my concept to reflect some of the points that you addressed. I altered the Questions to be more about the individual Pokemon, changed the wording of the General Description a bit, and added an example of a possible outcome to the Explanation to show how this concept could be fulfilled without giving the Mega an ability that boosts stats in the weather in order to demonstrate the variety of ways this concept can be approached.

 

[Cretacerus]

A lot of people seem to be saying that Typing Underdog is about playing to the strengths of typing and not try to compensate for its weaknesses. I think the example of a Rock/Steel typing has been used, so I'll carry on with this. The basic gist seems to using Rock moves offensively because of its good typing match ups when used offensively. This makes sense on paper, but then one realizes that there's few truly viable special rock moves, and the physical moves that are legal for CAP have drawbacks as well. Surely, an assortment of various abilities could patch up the move drawbacks, but then you're just patching up a drawback to the move in order to play to the typing's strengths (using rock head to patch up head smash, using compound eyes to patch up stone miss, using sheer force to patch up rock slide). I do not think that it is truly possible for either Typing Makeover or Typing Underdog to be successful without either of them playing to the typing's strengths and simultaneously patching up some form of drawback. When you get into the nitty gritty process, both of these concepts seem to needing most of the same things. You can frame it as playing to strengths or patching up weaknesses and prioritize one slightly over the other, but realistically both qualities are needed.

I think this is an important point which HeaLnDeaL brings up, and the difference between our concepts is by far not as simple as playing to the typing's strengths vs. patching up its weaknesses. Both concepts aim to succeed in their niche, and will therefore have to deal with both their strengths and weaknesses, but the difference between them is how they attempt to find that niche. While Typing Underdog takes into account every single attribute of the typing in order to find and explore its natural niche in the metagame, Typing Makeover is fine with isolating a few of those attributes from the rest and building up a entirely new niche from there. To stay with the Rock/Steel example, Typing Underdog would probably create an offensive pivot which plays on its good offensive typing and multiple resistances, while Typing Makeover might attempt to use the same resistances for a unique defensive role after getting rid of the weaknesses preventing this. After finding their respective niches, both concepts would of course use Abilities, Stats and Movepools to optimize that role, which includes both emphasizing the strengths and patching up weaknesses as correctly stated above.


Also, thanks everyone for the feedback!
jas61292: Following your recommendation, I've edited my explanation slightly to clarify the approach my concept would take.
WhiteDMist: Thanks as well for all the feedback you've been giving. One thing I wanted to point out regarding my concept is that it aims to explore the typing itself, as opposed to the individual sub-types it's made up from, whose attributes might clash with each other as you mentioned. Any dual-typing can instead be seen as unique and entirely independent.
Tsaeb XIII: Regarding your example, I do think both typing concepts would take advantage of the unique resistances provided by the Bug/Flying typing, which haven't been explored much in the metagame as of now. Typing Makeover might use those resistances coupled with a STAB U-Turn for a strong pivoting role after taking care of that SR weakness, while the strong Flying STAB might be interesting for Typing Underdog. Since Bug/Flying relies on switches a lot in both these roles, I could see something like Regenerator being very advantageous for it, while still maintaining the typing's inherent weakness to SR and the limitations to playstyle and team synergy resulting from that.

 

[Elite Lord Sigma]

I'm going to repost my old approved concept from the workshop to see how much traction it gets.


Name: Core Collapse (aka C-C-C-Core Breaker!*)

General Description: A Pokemon that can effectively break the common OU core of Landorus-T and Rotom-W.

Justification: Both Rotom-W and Landorus-T share the distinction of being an alternate forme introduced in the "third" versions of their respective generations. Thus, perhaps it is fate that these two form one of the most common cores in OU, if not the most common. As of this post, Landorus-T and Rotom-W occupy the first and third spots on the 1825 OU usage stats and are among each other's most common teammates. Even with the advent of Mega Evolution, there remains virtually nothing that can break through this core on its own that has not been banned to Ubers, leading most battlers to have to land repeated strong hits to wear it down. Thus, a Pokemon capable of reliably breaking this core on its own would have a unique niche in the OU metagame.

Questions to be Answered:

• What factors make the core of Rotom-W and Landorus-T effective in the OU metagame? In particular, what makes this core more effective than other cores in the OU metagame? (Most experienced battlers should have a response to these questions already, but it still needs to be addressed for this concept to work.)
• What approach (bulky, quick, etc.) is best suited for breaking through the core without making the CAP too powerful like the Pokemon that came before it (e.g. Greninja)? What viable function(s) outside of breaking such an ubiquitous core can a Pokemon have without being too powerful?
• What cores would become more viable and/or widely used as a result of the CAP threatening the Rotom-W/Lando-T core? Are any of these cores ones that are currently overlooked in the OU metagame?
• To what extent do particular playstyles require constructing a core? Conversely, to what extent do particular playstyles revolve around breaking opposing cores?
• On what team archetypes is the Rotom-W and Landorus-T core commonly found? What effect would reducing the viability of the core have on these archetypes?

Explanation: After the complex concepts of the previous two CAP projects, I looked back on earlier CAP projects for inspiration. The one that most struck a chord with me was Syclant, whose concept was "True Garchomp Counter." I think it would be beneficial for the CAP Project as a whole to consider more direct concepts, leading me to come up with this concept.

There are several factors underlying the effectiveness of the Landorus-T/Rotom-W core, such as defensive synergy, high bulk, and access to VoltTurn. I firmly believe that most or all of these factors would need to be addressed in order for this concept to be successful. For instance, simply making a Pokemon that can counter VoltTurn would not be sufficient to fulfill this concept, but such an approach would need to be one part of the overall process.

Furthermore, the last two CAP projects at the time of writing (Volkraken and Plasmanta) both focused on making a Pokemon fit into a core in one way or another. Both of them failed to fulfill their concepts, so I have come to believe that the concept of cores can be better examined by taking an approach opposite to that of previous CAP projects.

Another possible avenue to take with this concept would explore how much certain playstyles revolve around building a core. For example, certain playstyles (e.g. balanced) usually involve constructing a core in which each member can cover the weaknesses of another member of the core, allowing a skilled player to pivot and play around threats to the team. Other playstyles (e.g. hyper offense) do not concern themselves with such a core, but can often have certain members that are intended to be the linchpin of the team. As such, it would be interesting to see how disrupting what is arguably the most common core in OU would affect particular team archetypes.

The idea of various team archetypes being rendered impotent has also come up frequently in recent suspect tests (e.g. Greninja), so I think examining the balance of team archetypes in the OU metagame would be an interesting secondary objective of this concept.


*Credit to Acast for the alternate title for this concept.

 

[NumberCruncher]

As of this post, Landorus-T and Rotom-W occupy the first and third spots on the 1825 OU usage stats and are among each other's most common teammates.

You might want to update these figures, given that they aren't even remotely correct anymore. Landorus and Rotom occupy the second and twentieth spots on 1825 OU usage stats respectively, and Rotom is just barely Landorus's third most preferred partner.

 

[jas61292]

The time has come and gone, and this thread must come to an end. And now, here is the slate:

WhiteDMist's Toxic Spike Supreme
Cretacerus's Typing Underdog
RishRaff's Switching It Up
NumberCruncher's The Generalizer
Tsaeb XIII's Captain Boomerang
DetroitLolcat's Support Comes First

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WhiteDMist's concept was one I really liked right away. Toxic Spikes is a move that definitely has potential to be very powerful, but it is definitely difficult to pull off, especially with the potential users either not being particularly good, or simply having much better things to do. I think there is a lot we can do here and the concept brings up many excellent discussion points. It is simply a well made concept and I think it would be very fun to do.

As was shown in the thread, Cretacerus's concept obviously drew comparisons to HeaLnDeaL's, but ultimately, I think that Cretacerus's was better suited to this project. Both focus on typing, and making Pokemon with weaker types more viable, something that mega evolution is very much able to do. With that said, I think focusing on a types inherent strengths meshes better with mega evolution, which frequently will make Pokemon the very best at those strengths, and that is why I went with this one.

Phazing is a very interesting mechanic, and while it is one that is used somewhat frequently, it is almost never a real focus. RishRaff's concept puts the spotlight on a mechanic that people use every day, but never really gets thought about in depth. This concept would give us a chance to really take a look at how important counter boosting measures are, and what other uses you can get out of forcing switches.

NumberCruncher's concept focuses on game roles, which is always a good topic of conversation. This concept force a non-traditional use of mega evolution, but more importantly, it allows us to really take a deep look at one kind of role, and forces us to try and figure out when that role is useful and when it is not, which is the kind of important decision battlers have to make every game.

While a bit similar to the previous concept, Tsaeb XIII's is a bit more specific about roles, while allowing for more freedom in how we approach the different forms. There are significant differences between early and late game play, and that gives us a solid framework to utilize. Beyond that though, the concept is not overly restrictive, and gives us plenty of freedom as to which roles we want to look at. By going with this concept we would really get to take a good look at how early and late game play differ.

Finally, DetroitLolcats concept is interesting because it tries to make our mega CAP focus on something that mega Pokemon are not really known for. There are lots of good supportive moves and abilities, but we don't really see many mega Pokemon using them OU. This concept would make us analyze the metagame and figure out which of these things are most relevant and powerful in today's game. It could potentially be challenging to make a Pokemon fill a mainly supportive role while being worthy of a mega slot, but that challenge is partly what would make this concept fun to do.